Art Journal Cover...

I've been meaning to show you this for a long time and today is the day!

Last summer I bought some of the Peerless Watercolor paint swatches (and they are lovely, bee tea dubs!) but they are very pigmenty and they will get color where you don't want it if you aren't careful.  So even storage can be tricky.

I stumbled around the internet for awhile seeing what other people were doing with their swatches and decided I really like the small 8"x8" pocket pages with 4 pockets per page.  I found mine at Hobby Lobby.  (Baseball card storage pages would work as well).  

Well, a system that efficient needs a cute outside package right?  And wouldn't you know, I still had a nice chunk of the white Kraft-Tex left.  Remember Kraft-Tex?  From here and here?

To hold it all together I just threaded some cord through the binder holes and used a needle to pierce the cover and run through a couple of buttons on the outside.  

Because it's a paper fabric, it doesn't fray so the edges are just cut and left that way.  I started by stenciling some colors and shapes onto the Kraft-Tex, using gelatos and water color paints and then layered on more color and design by sponging distress ink with more stencils.  Where some color got too intense, I brushed white Gesso overtop to make it more transparent.  Then I added some random stamping, some fine line Sharpie drawing and hand lettering and that was about it.  Big impact with deceptively little effort!

I found the quote somewhere else on the internet and of course my practice efforts made me happier than what's on the actual cover, but isn't that always the way?

Thanks for stopping by again today!